What if COVID-19 broke out in Winter/Spring 2006?

[FuckedUp]

Yeah, yeah, it wouldn't be called COVID-19, but suppose COVID-05/06 were identical to what this is. Same spread, etc. What would've people done at the time?

EDIT: Meant to post in Deep Thoughts, but whatever.

 

[murdered meat bag]

the great recession would probably would've happened right after. It' hard to say since 2005/06 is before the great sjwing of america. Maybe we'd still have obama then trump. but jobs would be shit.

 

[sasazuka]

In that reality, Doogal, Disney's The Wild, and Hoot would have been delayed and have had terrible box office numbers.

In our reality, things were completely different: those films weren't delayed

 

[FuckedUp]

In that reality, Doogal, Disney's The Wild, and Hoot would have been delayed and have had terrible box office numbers.

In our reality, things were completely different: those films weren't delayed

Over the Hedge was underrated.

 

[Orion Balls]

2006 is much closer to 2001 than now. We were still pretty tense that year, iirc. Probably would have been as rough as it is, now, only slightly more unified.Meanwhile, so long as the Superbowl still happened in 2006, who fucking cares?

 

[FuckedUp]

2006 is much closer to 2001 than now. We were still pretty tense that year, iirc. Probably would have been as rough as it is, now, only slightly more unified.Meanwhile, so long as the Superbowl still happened in 2006, who fucking cares?

Terrorism =/= public health.

 

[HarveyMCR]

the great recession would probably would've happened right after. It' hard to say since 2005/06 is before the great sjwing of america. Maybe we'd still have obama then trump. but jobs would be shit.

Great Recession might’ve been less devastating because the speculation market hadn’t reached hyper saturation. Of course there would’ve been a recession, but those worthless security bundles might’ve been traded with more caution than in our timeline, so the floor might not have fallen out from under them. Also Banks wouldn’t have given out so many sub prime mortgages so while you would see the typical economic devastation from normal recessions, you wouldn’t have so many family’s losing their houses in the process.

 

[oldTireWater]

9/11 was "yesterday". Iraq was "real". The patriot act and the establishment of DHS were just a couple years old. Alberto Gonzalez and John Yoo were legalizing torture. The democrats had just won congress. People were pissed. Nobody would have been cool bowing to a government lock-down over the fucking flu. Covid-06 would have been back-page news.

 

[GHTD]

Oddly specific OP.

 

[sasazuka]

Over the Hedge was underrated.

Over the Hedge did pretty well at the box office if I remember correctly. I was only listing (domestic) box office failures (yeah, I know Doogal wasn't technically domestic).

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

If it had broken out back then people would have largely ignored it, like when Swine Flu 1 broke out (this being Swine Flu 2). People weren't such disgusting cowards back then, and the media wasn't quite as obsessed with dethroning the President by trying to engineer economic crises and mass panic.

 

[Return of the Freaker]

China would probably be trying super hard to save face, but Hu Jintao wasn't an absolute fuckstick like Pooh Bear. I don't think you'd see the amount of China dickriding you have today. Also, social justice hadn't erupted like a giant puss filled zit yet, so no race card bs.

 

[DumbDude42]

by now covid19 has killed 20 times more americans than 9/11 did, and it has already caused many times more global deaths within a few months than the chernobyl disaster fallout did over the course of 40 fucking years
my point is that all these "nobody would have cared lmao" answers posted here are fucking retarded. covid19 has killed roughly a quarter million people already, and it's not looking like it's slowing down very much. this shit would have been big enough to make bush and cheney seriously consider recalling all troops from iraq and just hand over the country back to the baath party again lol

 

[2021Murder]

No one would have followed quarantine. A big reason people are complaint now is because everyone can just watch netflix and listen to podcasts. Plus every dirtbag comedian would be posting on myspace how this was just a plot from the Rethuglicans to go full 1984. People were semi-scared of birdflu and anthrax, but after those 2 and some other bullshit i'm forgeting, people were tired of GOP nothing burgers. Also global knowledge was way worse back then so we wouldn't have seen those videos of Chinese people being welded into homes and other crazy shit except when it was shown on Fox News and we all know how much people trust them.

if your google-fu is good you can go back and watch old clips of how people were responding to the SARs and birdflu outbreaks. Jon Stewart, hunter s thompson, colin quinn, louis ck, patrice o'neal, howard stern, artie lange and Stephen Colbert told the Bush administration to go fuck themselves when the medical professionals were like "maybe this might be something to worry about" The Chinese would be as well liked as the Star Wars prequels, Muslims would suddenly be our best friends.

Also the baby boomers were only just entering the "danger zone" for the disease so people would have given less of a fuck because the Bush admin would be saying "we have to do this to protect the silent generation, who are mainly known for protesting civil rights and de-segregation because we should destroy our economy so literal klan members and nazis may live" which obviously wouldn't have helped the situation. the entertainment industry would be declaring war on him just because there was no paetreon, cameo, instagram, etc other ways for them to make money online shilling beauty products.

Everyone would be pro-"fuck grandma" in the 2000s. Especially with the rise of libertarian-ism back then. Even 2009 would be iffy. smart phones weren't ubiquitous, Netflix would be doubling in value every week, same with amazon. It probably would have worked because black people actually did what he said, but it would have soured people's reputation of him to 2016 levels in 2010.

also it probably would have fucked the entertainment industy way way harder than people think. celebrities would be uploading videos to youtube instead of to facebook and insta and snap but without the censorship and algorithm to help promote them they would have to compete against smosh and NigaHiga, and pewdiepie. it would really cause quite a few major celebs to sperg out. this was before it was known to not read comments or respond to trolls or other obvious shit. it would have been a shitload of fun for 4channers. plus most of youtube was parodies or snarking on celeb culture so people would have been absolute savages to these people, lots of "having a problem uploading your video? just delete system32"

We would have seen at least one film studio release straight to online. but there would have been a lot of problems. companies weren't focused on their online prescene back then, which is why netflix had almost every movie and tv show ever made.

online culture probably would be hugely different just because normies would have been forced online without the censorship and algorithms to keep them away from the regular, Encyclopedia Dramatica style internet.

 

[DumbDude42]

We would have seen at least one film studio release straight to online. but there would have been a lot of problems. companies weren't focused on their online prescene back then, which is why netflix had almost every movie and tv show ever made.

no online movies. the infrastructure simply wasn't there yet.
back in 2006, downloading an entire movie in watchable resolution would have taken like 12 hours or more. forget about streaming entirely, we're talking about the days when youtube videos were 360p at best and were plagued by constant pauses due to buffering

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

No lie, I've been thinking about this shit for weeks.

Blows my mind.

 

[Michael Jacks0n]

I was an unemployed NEET living with the parents in early 2006, so the quarantine would have meant staying in my bedroom and playing PS2 nonstop.

So, literally nothing would have changed for my life at the time.

 

[Dom Cruise]

It would have been a big nothing burger like Swine Flu in 2009.

Things were radically different in the 2000s, people had more backbone back then.

In that reality, Doogal, Disney's The Wild, and Hoot would have been delayed and have had terrible box office numbers.

In our reality, things were completely different: those films weren't delayed

Hoot is actually pretty good, shame it was a flop.

 

[sasazuka]

Hoot is actually pretty good, shame it was a flop.

That's what I've heard about Hoot, I wasn't implying it was a bad movie. It seems like the sort of smaller movie that just got lost in the shuffle as it opened against the first wave of "summer" blockbusters that year. If they had only just released it a couple of weeks earlier, to be in theatres by Earth Day, it might at least have made its $15 million budget back.

 

[I can't imagine]

I think one thing worth remembering is that, at least in the U.S., doing a prolonged lockdown in the manner we've been doing would've been much less practical in 2006. A lot of places weren't even equipped in a manner that would allow for people to work remotely (particularly most government facilities), and the majority of people didn't have broadband in their home. Smartphones had a tiny percent of the market. Food delivery outside of major metro areas was pretty much limited to pizza and (maybe) Chinese food. Grocery delivery was almost non-existent. Ordering online for anything was still something a lot of people were scared of; most young people had adjusted, but the 40+ crowd were still apprehensive in a lot of cases. In short, way more people would be out of jobs, and people would've gotten bored and restless way faster.

This isn't to say they would've done nothing. Some cities might've done quarantines; NYC seems likely, at the very least. But this kind of sweeping, almost nation-wide shutdown for 6-8 weeks? I doubt people would seriously have floated it as an option.